011004 There was a boy who lived in a bottle (a fairly well-appointed bottle, it may be said, with ochre carpets and a wet-bar), and he wouldn’t be persuaded to come out unless we (the audience?) could find some people for him to play his guitar with. He was a touch sullen, but with a good sense of humor, not too bitter. 011404 All those ones and ohs and fours. Still, I’m not too upset about it. It’s a good year. I’m just in the junkyard which was a fun place to be in the summer dog sun, but is not so appealing now that the crusty snows of winter are dusting my empty tires. I got to get someplace, or go get something, or just go into the ground. There’s got to be a tube or something around here. Shurely you just peel back one of these planks, and a trap door appears. Why wouldn’t one of the old tractor tires be a port hole to another dimension? Isn’t that what the junkyard is for? For heaven’s sake, why do we throw away all this junk, if it’s not going to lead the way to a better world? Or at least a different dream.... I don’t know, I mean I like it here, but, you know, it’s just, I don’t know. I guess I’m ready. Yeah. I don’t feel so good. I’ve had a cold for a month now, maybe. My throat is g-g-g-g-g-g-ah! and my eyes are shallow. I look this way and that but I miss most of everything. It’s basically an unfriendly world when you’re a sick bastard. Even the library looks at you in suspicion. Return your god damned library books, it seems to sneer. Return them, you bastard. I know you have them. And you are wasting them. Give them to someone who can learn something from them. And I whimper. I can’t return my library books because I can’t walk in the snow; I’m too sick and it’s too far away. I need a doctor’s excuse. There’s a big spike in the wall about a foot away from my face. That’s a one-of-a-kind detail that distinguishes a work of art like this (world) from those other paltry generations of pre-computer computers. The computers they computed with before computation got computery. Dig? Shallow. I wish I had a lifesaver. I think I’m going to skip class. Maybe I’ll walk around stoned. Maybe I’ll get real stoned offa banana bread, and go walk around and eat M&M’s on campus. Maybe I’ll climb up on that brick arch between those two old yellow buildings over by where my class is supposed to be. Maybe I’ll sit up there and dangle my smile for all to see, like a vicious but friendly gargoyle of stone cold naivete. Maybe I’ll type it all into my journal because I don’t quite understand it yet. But when I do, when I do (I can’t even remember what kind of PANTS I was wearing!), I’m gonna be stone busted sad. Sad pants. That’s what kind of pants I’m wearing now. And they fit. They fit all. Too. Well. Maybe people will go obliviously through the arch. I’ll wear a skirt. I won’t wear pants at all. You can see my panties. If you really wanna. I ain’t afraid. I’m pretty fucking cute up here on my arch with my long hair in the automatic wind. “Blow me!” Maybe some people will come and go through the arch, and some of them will stop and notice me, and I will notice them back, and then for that we won’t owe each other a god damn thing. Not one red cent, not one thin dime, not one bicentennial quarter. Not one Sasquatch dollar. God the money is so beautiful and meaningless when it spills out into the sun. Hard core radiation drops of summer coming fall. Dappled the sidewalk with pricks of copper, and nickel, alive, alive-oh! Love me. I sure as hell love you. This place (not that place, not that arch, but this place, this place where I am supposed to be “now”) could turn upside-down any minute, the roof could break, and all our coffee cups turn into boats. The women and children first! That’s right, get them out of here. Then we can play poker and strip and stuff. Get around to the serious business of being men. Someone’s gonna die tonight, ript from asshole to underarm by someone else’s blade. And it’s gonna feel goooooooooooood! Ah hell. Don’t get pissed. We’re all goin down anyway. You know they don’t got enough lifeboats for us all. You know that. You knew that comin in here. So deal. Another hand. Come on. Give me your hand. Put it there, champ. Put it there and stroke it up and down. That’s a real man.... The people have abdicated. That’s the death knell. That’s the only reasonable facsimile of a political essay I can conjure at the minute. The people have abdicated. No, okay, not all of them. You still have your jackdaws, your shrews, your wailing wandas. Your ex-army hopefuls with their dusty voices, peeping praise. Your respectful majority, your radio listeners, your traffic-light stoppers-at. Your people in your grocery store, your eaters of steak, your carrion birds. But the people, let me tell you, people, people, people who are everywhere, who exist like punctuation in an overly legible document, your people have abdicated. There is a mass-hypnosis cum large-scale surrender going on right now, on a street corner near you, in a coffee house, in a university, in the elevator. Give up, give up, give up; that’s the buzz from the overhead projector. Remember those dinosaurs? Shh. Here comes one now. Up the stairs, looking away, looking at, then looking quickly away again. Ascending the flight we all ascend. A dinosaur with a bald spot. It would be cute but I don’t like the way he smells. “This isn’t making any sense” isn’t making any sense, isn’t it? Isn’t. n’t. n’t. n’t. Running out of “Oh, we don’t doubt your sincerity, Mister Uh, it’s only that we feel....” “We feel....” Let me help you. “We feel that your services could be more cross-effectively reimpositioned elsewhere.” Dag. I just ate a tall cup of sugary shit and now I feel awful. I guess it has all finally caught up with me. I am vulnerable. And it only took what, thirty-three years and change. Oh well. Might as well sign me up for the ski resort. I’m a lumberyard now. This room would be an easy room in which to fly. If I were going to learn flying, I would start here. Look at the great peaked roof. Look at the spidery beams. Look at the punchy duct. Look at all that beautiful, calm, big space. It’s clear. It’s clear in here, more clear than anywhere I’ve been for a long time. I wonder why that is? Coincidence? Juxtaposition of nodal lines? History schmistory? This was some kind of a place, you know, before it turned into what it is sort of supposed to be right now. It wears the costume of what it is supposed to be now with a good grace and a sense of humor. You know. Kind of like the way I don’t. This was some kind of hydroelectric something or other. I don’t know. Something important and slightly dangerous. Something that was probably perfectly humdrum when it was operating at full blast, but now, now in its old fart fuddy duddy “I’m a cute expensive coffee shop” clothes, it bubbles and boils up so full of turgid expectation and nostalgia, I can hardly stand to sit here. On my seat. Without flying up into the big clear empty space above us all. Ducking and swooping and carrying on. The way we like to do on a Wednesday night. Speaking of which: am I going to class, or am I ditching? I love that curmudgeonly turn of phrase. Ditching. It reminds me of when I was a soft-chinned babe, back in that other latitude. Back when I didn’t care that I was a wretched failure. Well. That’s not entirely accurate. I cared then. I cared then a lot, sometimes I ranted and cried and tore my hair and sulked. But I don’t care NOW that I was a failure THEN. I FORGIVE me, I look back and I see how much fun I was having and I say, SHIT, if I were having that much fun NOW, I wouldn’t mind being a dismal failure either. I’d forgive me, TOO. But I’m not. So I can’t. Or I won’t. Or I haven’t. But eventually, I’m sure I will. Or else I’ll die first. It’s a race against time. Right now I’m ahead by a full lap. I have reached speeds approaching zero. And half of that, and half of that, and half of that.... At last, a repetitious bass line and a sweet crisp harmony. I can let music blunt the sharp edges of the technological pseudo-present. We are all prisoners here, of course, we established that in the so-called 70’s. What we are prisoners of, now, now that that is being revealed, that is a real surprise. (The people have abdicated.) Progressive bullshit. Why would I have invented a world like this? I must have uncovered it, a slug under a rock, and it must have left a trail the which I followed home. Home to the salt mines. Did I mention there’s a spike in the--oh yeah. I’ve been married for a year and a day. Maigh Galore! so what DO you want to be doing? doing? doing? (said that sorry old beast, teh-dsa. Ha! You call yourself a glow-worm. It’s easy to ask open-ended, ill-defined, ambiguous questions such as that! You stink-pot. If you’re an oracle, I’m a clavicle!) So...? 011604 you cannot even imagine what real power is. People sure eyeball other people a lot in here. The sideways smile. The eyeball knife. They use any technique in the book. The book itself. They hide behind it, watching you approach through the type on the pulp. Then when you get close, they strike. Their eyelids flutter, their lashes flicker, their venomous gaze lashes technically, tinily, delicately and with disastrous speed into your hapless brain. Sheep’s brains for dinner tonight in the old cafe. You cannot even imagine what real power is. That one table in the cafe that is always taken, so far never by me: in its own little balcony / alcove, overlooking the pump room, entered through a rustic brick hole in the wall on the loft level. From down here on the mezzanine level, in my mean seat at the long counter, i gaze up at it and, stupidly, hope. Most people think power is being able to do things, not not having to do things. No they don’t. Whatever. Fuck you/me/them. Don’t want to stay here but don’t want to go home. How many times have I felt that? Too god damned many. You know when it’s sour, but you don’t know when to throw it out. What, there might be a prize in the bottom? Or you might get punished. Horniness is weird. How it seems to select at random. One wholesome face with sensuality. One skinny legs and sharp tights. One robust, one delicate and arrogant. One mindless. One frightening. I would be a slave to chaos, had I the courage of my own submission. I am afraid of the pump room, its hollow of the machine age. It beckons downward. Its gears would like to eat me up. It is lonely in there, and cold. I am drawn to the pump room. city skyline in her veins i have to go now, backstage. i don’t have a pass. i hear the rinky dink piano. i scuffle toward the light. dust motes pirrouette mid-air to greet me. kill me, paint the scenery with my blood. i have to go backstage. now. all is dark except the exit lights: illuminate they other paths than mine, bifurcations into th’eternal night. i let them go, they grow like hair down someone else’s tawny shoulder. i have to go backstage and meet someone. get a prop. say a line. sweep the floor. anything. but i do. have. to go. I have to piss too. But that’s a different story. I just found kitkat bars in my vest pocket=excuse to hang a while longer. Plus anyway they haven’t asked me to leave yet. Yet. Here’s what it (sometimes) comes down to: if I admit I’m not happy, some part of me feels guilty for not loving my daughter enough. But god bless it! I am (in general, to a large extent, on average, in certain elusive but important (to me) areas of the soul) unhappy AND I love my daughter! What the fuck! And then there’s the guilt around the wife, too. Whole nother story. Same story. Some things (never) change. Don’t get cute with me, clown-toes. I’m getting shaky. Coffee, fruit and kitkats don’t a healthy supper make. Yeah, so anyway. Yeah, fuck that. deek rooh porf stingle franaway corler fnit creeps! (That means something.) I guess I’m just waiting for something to break. Same way I take care of my car. The fuck. I’m going to go to hell to get an oil change. 011704 On the other hand, maybe there are more kinds of animals than sheep and tigers, and to insist on the dichotomy reveals an arrogant immaturity of perception. And besides, maybe sheep CAN fight tigers, if not strictly by the tigers’ rules. * I know I’m a dork but I don’t care that I am: Panther is freaking awesome. It makes my clamshell cool again! 012104 You’d better go find a place to masturbate. You have hair growing on your mound. It’s funny. When I’m depressed I’m unhappy with her, and when I’m not I’m not. Maybe it’s not her. Just a thought. There sure are a lot of lesbians in here. Where do you work? I work in the glistening pit. Where do you sleep? I sleep in the balcony cove. When do you hide? When anyone comes. How often do you make love? Whenever the sun comes up. Why are you so fucked up? Shut up, bitch! This place is indescribably cool (Alterra in the Pumping Station). To sit here is to bask simultaneously in the humble grandeur of history and in the relative benevolence of modern commerce. It’s... cool! Tell me more about the glistening pit. The glistening pit is sweet and bitter. Sometimes it has beads of dew. It is soft and rough. It can be welcoming and scary. I always go back there eventually. It tastes and smells like home. You can find it anywhere there is life. Some say it is the source of life, others say it is the mouth. Tell me more about the balcony cove. The balcony cove is a perch, an aerie, a nest, and a den. Someone is always there. I have gone in there but never to settle down. Someone has always beaten me to it, sometimes by only seconds. I expect someday, if I remain vigilant, I will get in there. And then, who knows, I may not wish to stay. It is a wondrous place of illumination and imagination. You can look down on almost everything and be protected. But it may not really be real. I don’t know for sure. Tell me more about when anyone comes. I run and hide because chemicals spurt and neurons fire. I run and hide because I can. I am invisible, I am small. I am a macroscopic space mouse and I go down into the colossal gears and conduits that writhe and wrestle underneath this place. Only I can go in there. It is a secret. Secrets made the stars. Tell me more about making love. Sometimes the sun comes up when it is still raining. These times are the best times. 012204 So maybe the reason web sites like grouphug // confessions are so fascinating is they are alive and chaotic. I mean, they’re not just some asshole proselytizing at you, selling something, or reporting the party line. They’re random bits of what actual life actually is, and you can’t find it the same way in the old forms of literature. They are not mystical, they are not heirarchical, they are not didactic. They are not a lot of things, but I’m not sure exactly what they are. Except fascinating. 012404 I FUCKIT! came here to smoke. After all this clean-air time. I FUCKIT! came here to smoke. Do you want to know why? Here’s my GOOD excuse: Because a little boy told me (in my dream last night) that he wants to die. He was a little blond kid. I’ll call him Max. He had a brother of course, maybe two. Also a sister. Betcha didn’t know that. (Betcha didn’t care, who the fuck are you anyway, it’s sunny outside and full of dirty salt, all the usual stuff.) FUCKIT! I came here to smoke. That’s not going to cut it, is it, though. Smoke and mirrors can’t fix everything. Some things, but not everything. Sometimes you have to look like a complete and utter FUCKING idiot. No, I mean more than you already do. You have to look like an active idiot, and on-purpose idiot, not the passive good-boy idiot you’ve let yourself become. FUCKIT! Coffee & cigarettes, coffee & cigarettes & a slight backache. It feels good. My feet are going to hurt tomorrow from practicing “martela” today. I don’t know how to spell that. I don’t know how to spell any of the Capoeira shit, except Capoeira. And maybe que-- queixada? See, I’m not even sure about that one. Oh yeah, I can spell “negative.” But that’s not how it sounds. Same with “regional.” So what? What’s the point of all this? The point of all this (she patiently explained inside his treacherous body) is the steam, the sweat, the beat, the brow, the hot red wood of the snoke. And the thin-lipped woman at the next table, perusing the week in review. Slender: you can see the blue tracery under the skin of her long hands. Elvin eyes but trollen cheeks. Very cute. A champion accessorizer. Can get away with wearing filmy scarves. She’s drinking a smoothie. That’s the tip of the fireberg. I comforted the little blond kid, little Max, the one who came back to the window after I chased them all away. I stroked his hair and sent him off with his sister. But that’s not quite enough either, is it? Dear Max: me too but let’s not. Let’s think of something else to play, to get us out of this, or deeper in, anywhere but frozen on either side of the window. don’t know if she knew i was looking at her but i just caught her looking at me. Funny thing is how at ease i am, because it’s not a big deal. It’s nice to interact with humans, no matter how punctuationally. commas and periods blipping discretely at each other from across the paragraf........ in between the passions of the vowels, the crusades of the consonants, they live in cafes like this (cellular automata with anemic consciousness.) you will recieve good news. get your family and friends together and celebrate. a delightful gift will arrive in the mail. an old friend will return to steal your heart. call an old friend. one way or another (patrick was right?) you always go back. back to the bowl back to the snoke you so fucked up you don’t even know what you a slave to bitch. “Are you heading out?” asks the thickheaded squinty girl of the round unemployable man. “No I’m still here,” he says and we all go back to being embryos. Some people still read books, of course; I’m not one of them I do visit books. I wander thru them as thru a grocery store, holding hands with someone, picking out lettuce and granola. It’s all I can do not to burst into cartwheels. What are we doing here? who cares! Play the drums! but she’s not smiling any more, doesn’t find the situation as funny as i do (yet). She feels betrayed. We go outside by the ruff tan cinder bricks. THE PARKING LOT. She gets a ride going one way, I get a ride going the other. We never see each other again. She got the lettuce, I got the plastic bag. I gave the granola to a scruffy dog I thought was a stray but who really belonged to a hippie chick who let me borrow her drums so I could play! And I did sis, at least once, thank the gods. the score is 2 to 1, cigs to cof touch on touch on what’s the social and political context of all this? Fuck i don’t know. Take a class or something. Shit. 3 to 1 can’t stop now, it’s a throwaway comeback, it’s the undergod’s delight kooBi. kool dnuora. dneterp uoy t’nera. tuhs eht kcuf pu! Every day I see something I haven’t seen before. I’m blessed that way. I don’t mean to brag, but I can’t help it. Every day I wake up in a new national park. There’s antelopes and snowmobiles and Republicans with great paws--watch out! Just give them the food and back away slowly. Don’t climb a tree. That shit doesn’t work except in the movies. You heard it here first: lord, I’m pathetic. I hope you got a good laugh. Thanks for loving me, those of you. I love you too. I wish I was better at it, but shit. At least I’m learning to be a good sport about it. Fucking faggit. I don’t want a faggy guy. But I do want to be a faggit. Unless you’ve watched too much TV and shit, you know that’s not such an alarming contradiction. I guess I’ve watched too much TV and shit. The elf-troll girl with blue eyes says, “Something in my brain is telling me something.” She has to sit back and evaluate things. Or else she’s reduced to flailing her arms and screaming. You go, girl. The old dirty-pants guy who plays the banjo on Fridays is in here. It’s not Friday. He somehow manages to look weathered but not too tragic. He’s a nice enough guy, even though he can’t sing worth a shit. I have a present for him, too. I have presents for everybody. If only I could remember which CLOSET I stored them in. I couldn’t believe it was true, lord, I couldn’t believe it was true. It’s a race, now. Whoo hoooooo!!!!!!!!!!! Do I die first? Or do I play it? It’s a race but it’s not just me out here. Little Max, that little fucker, he stowed away with me on my sled. Thought he was a lump of provisions. A sleeping bag. Until he lifted up his head and said, “I want to die.” Then I knew I wasn’t alone out here with the sad eyed dogs. In the cold. I got to get him back to the warmth at least. I can’t just die out here alone, like I planned. I’d give him a nip of this brandy if he weren’t so young. Ah fuck, here ya go kid. Careful now. There you go. Now. We got to get a fire going. In the morning we’ll start-- What? Yes. there’s no point in lying to you. We are lost. But don’t worry about it. We’ll find our way back. To somewhere. Don’t worry. Just put that kindling down there. Good boy. Okay. Let’s get some rest. Big day tomorrow. Good boy. That’s right. Okay. One of the dogs, the pesky one with one black eye and one red eye, wants to know: What is the historical and political context of all this? Fuck! Why do they keep asking me that! Okay, just think, “beginning of the end.” Think, “tip of the slippery slope.” Think, “that fuzzy point that’s not a point where historians will try to place the beginning of the decline and fall of the American empire.” Think about that, will you? Here’s a bone. Guess I got to go to fucking work now. Fuck. Let’s try to even the score a little first, quick, just because I’m pretending to be a contentious old bastard. 3 to 2 cig to cof now i’m broke cuz i gave her a 300% tip in exchange for the warm warm privelege of sitting here wasting time and juice. you got to support your favorite cafes even if you haven’t been here in a while. I haven’t been here since i used to get stoned and yell at the crows. apparently “free” isn’t the same as “available.” you may be thick and funny looking, but at least you’re a girl 012804 path get. not the first time tempted to piss in the sink at Rochambo. SMOKE! and thus reinvigorated / and thus with renewed purpose / aesthetic unshakeability / you’re on your own here buddy / that’s the scariest delight with vicarious sympathy sympathetic vicariism the honesty with which you go into the restroom at Rochambo says a lot about the people who respond to it: “Is it out of order?” (reading a sign taped to the door. two soft lollygagging boys loll at a very nearby table. i watch from over here) “I don’t know what that means.” (reading: “Blaspheming in the eyes of saints.”) “Does that mean it’s out of order?” (collecting the laughs (yes, including mine pitched just louder enough than the lollyboys’ to compensate for my greater distance) with perfect poise, turning around to shut the door, looking out long enough to show us her relaxed, ironic grin. it’s beautiful in a sandpaper sawdust lily-black sheen of the horse’s neck sort of way.) the beautiful thing is how we’re all on stage. little stages. the horrendous thing is how incredibly subtle it all is. low-key. minimalist, even. it’s disgusting. too much almost. i mean, too much “almost.” too much of that tired old nonarrival. or failing that, too much abandon, too much oblivion, but all of it so subdued, earth-toned, kept-in-check. it’s like a library without the electricity. no, that actually sounds really cool. it’s like... it’s like... it’s like a goddamned coffee house in here. bad art with big feet prances the walls two tokens of submission: the dime and the quarter. i have to call her to tell her i’ll be late now that’s not entirely accurate. i don’t HAVE to. but i will. and of course that’s much worse (better). i have no cause to complain. i’m a suicidal fake-a-holic. bipolar is a buzzword that fits well enough to salve my prissy pride. *the elevated little finger of the prissy tea drinker: Fred Majdalany* that’s me. another raspberry treasure hidden in the thorns of the dictionary. how i dig that book. one of the few really cool ones anymore. books, ha! PRIGGISH, FINICKY 2 : lacking in masculine vigor : SISSIFIED oh yes! god yes! bring it on! squirt it all over me! please please! so like, the universe is this big hole populated with visionary philosophers (a dime a dozen), all playing out their disgustingly minimalist scenes, all off in their timing by about a beat and a half, all sitting at tables like this, each one blah blah blah banging and crunching away wishing they could even begin to dream of touching the beautiful, subtle but strangely, wonderfully huge bazongas of the barrista downstairs...... all thinking of masturbating or at least pissing in the sink. my god they were both big and pert. you don’t see that very often. at least i don’t. what’s going on in your putrid little minimalist miasma? (asking with a grin) somebody claps her hands and says, “oh, shit!” it’s moments like these that send cataclysms of nothingness in outward ribs thruout the ether in and out of here. meanwhile, in the library without electricity, someone is surrounded by the smell of books. did i say “salve my pride”? check this out: Middle English salf, salve, from Old English sealf; akin to Old Saxon salea salve, Middle Low German & Middle Dutch salve, Old High German salba salve, Greek elpos oil, fat, elphos butter, olp* oil flask, Sanskrit sarpis melted butter, ghee, Albanian gjalp* butter so in other words, whatever it was i was talking about could be said to have been a way of buttering myself up!!!! wait. dorothy wants to ask someone else. i know, we could ask Cholula! (so we do, and she says ‘maybe you should just read a book.’ that fucking whore) patterns generally work better than pictures for the desktop. i’m not sure why that is, but it’s another case of how the older limitation remains superior to many of the newer options someone who can’t sing so good is doing “bohemian rhapsody” on the stereo. it’s cool. either i’m out of practice or else turkish gold aren’t as smooth as they used to be. they’ve probably quietly upped the tar and nicoteine, they way they do. a howl of triviality. a whole barn of nothing but straw and hay and bugs and dirt and slivers and pebbles and pellets and musk and air and grass and prickers and stickers and beggarlice and moonlight and slats and treble cheering and laughing, licking toward you over the amaranthine field. lightning somewhere, faraway and big. heat lightning, they’ll call it, the barn dancers, and they won’t stop, they won’t stop for lightning, even when it resolves into crackling forks, even when it grows demonic, inhumane, even when it brings its boulder-headed friend the thunder, when the whips of water come, the sheets, the hail, the torrents, and even when the mud grows bigger than the sky, they just keep dancing, even when the solid pulse of the drums is drowned, even when it’s insane to be out here in weather like this. because that’s what they do. it’s not work, it’s not art, they didn’t plan it this way, but they open their legs and their coats and their gauzy, sweaty, rainstreaked and mudsmeared souls to it. fuck them. i mean that in a good way. fuck them. please. one more time. for me. because i’m over here where it’s dry and chilly, for now. for this season. this long, aching season and that girl over there on her cel phone is wearing the worst possible hat trying to get a spark also you get some scrap, remnant, frizzy bit, bright piece of trash and you stick it in your pocket and take it home, behind the grocery store, and try to work it into your little project, your little weaving, little tapestry while people wait for the bus, cheat on each other, sob to the sidewalk, pass by being married’s not so bad. it really is the little things. Like when I told her about how john was going to bring a little toaster oven to work so we could heat up frozen stuff for our lunches, and she said, “You could have little quiches!” 013004 <status report> we got slightly tinny, frenetic music on the can, and we got a slightly chubby guy playing intermittently on a sweet-sounding real guitar over in the corner. Here. Among us. In the control room. I’d rather listen to him than the can, which is pretty annoying in contrast, especially when the canned vocalist starts pinching out his self-conscious words that all seem unfortunately to be “about” something. The can is too damn loud. Damn the damn can. the chubby guy with the sweet guitar plays slower, with more slow, present flesh. i can taste his harmonies like honeysuckle. the can is still the can. this is what this age is: the can vs the chubby & fleshy among us. i hope we win. our odds look a little thin. funny how rosa, an old mexican lady i’ve never met in the flesh, has guided me so. she said i was a weaver, and so i’ve begun to learn to weave. bard-to-be? sweet general encouragement. the imperfections of the chub are more apparent on this side of the wall. I came around here to get farther away from the can, and I am, and it’s a little less annoying, but now I can hear the imperfections of the chubby guy more clearly. he’s playing an old Rush tune. Cliched. Adorable. Still preferable. with imperfections like these, tho, how can we prevail over the harsh precision of the can? How can we not be lazered to ribbons by the can’s digital dynamism? how can we slip under the scanner? excape from the imaginary yard? escape from the wretched white non-space? i dunno. i guess we’ll hafta wing it. isn’t that what we coveralled, helicopter-piloting, mercenary, soft-hearted, greased monkeys always do? guitars out of tune but all sincere.... tippity tip tippity tip go the chub’s nails on the wood of the acoustic. (paper) notes stuck everywhere some hidden some concealed some in front of your nose. here goes the chub with a clapton tune. nice. flawed. as warped as the tiles in my grandma’s basement floor. almost as comforting, more comforting perhaps because he is an intimate stranger in a strangely intimate setting. if nothing else, you can always read the dictionary. i have classic on my panther just for quark and the dictionary. that sentence would have made about zero sense to me if i were to have seen it a few years ago. say, back in the days of the tandy 1000. i would have probably wondered what the hell that was all about. so much music it is almost meaningless error so many sources of music interfering with each other here, the net result approaches meaninglessness. barely acceptable the chub hasn’t yet learned to take his time take your time take it where? oh shut up. less mouthing off, more titsucking. i am a shiteater after all. and somehow, quietly, insanely, inanely proud of it. yeah sometimes i wish my wife wasn’t fat, but what the hell. at least she’s my wife and at least she engages my perversions. not a lot of people would. or so i’ve gathered. at least, not a lot of people who aren’t totally creepy. still, i’d like to be able to dress her up in those flimsy nighties and things. since i can’t wear them well myself. i guess neither of us embodies my ideal of woman. tough titties, as they say. i’m still a gazelle. she’s still a lion. aitch tee em ell. i’m waiting for the next big thing. aitch tee em ell is too tedious, too concrete, too predictable, too static. or so i with my limited grasp have dared conclude. i know there are other thingies that can go with it, cgi, perl, java and all that, but who has time for that shit? i want immediate thought transfer. i want a big bucket of shit. i want flow, man, flow. accidental on purpose ease. like the typewriter. i suppose the first typewriters probably didn’t type themselves. so i guess i’m looking either for the next big thing, or else the next glacial shift such that the last big thing is fully digested, assimilated into natural consciousness sufficiently that plebes such as myself can --do something i think girls have gotten prettier in the last five to ten years. in general. guys have gotten maybe a little more generic. or else they’re just in stealth mode. or else i am. yeah that’s probably it. we are essentially a binary culture. dichotomies define what we think of as space, be that space psychic, physical, or spiritual. even the most famous trifecta are bounded by the male/female polarity. why? i guess it’s no wonder we came up with binary machines to do all this crap. the chub says, there’s a time and a place for everything. don’t neglect the actual tonality etc etc. he’s such a dear. such a wooly, fuzzy, clueless cutie pie. i’d like to go give him a hug and a blowjob. what the fuck is wrong with me? why haven’t i? why do instead i ask these empty threatening questions? some people use the wah wah pedal twice, some people smash the china boy. some people think the guitar is an eccentric trick. it’s all pretending, jo. he talks so much about direction and what his friends have, what instruments, he talks so earnestly but he hasn’t really experienced IT yet. I say that (actually i don’t say that, cuz i’m a fat pussy) as if i have. well. actually i have. fuck me if i’m wrong (but isn’t your name agnes...?) IT’s a slippery tit, son. suck it while she lets ya. then beg to eat her shit. that’s the cycle of life, ain’a. jam it if ya got it son of a FUCK! chub’s anti-possession. most of his stuff is hand-me-downs. he has his father’s guitar from 1968. the drum company Tama made guitars for two years. again, that’s so Sweet! bless his chubby little heart! he is the coal, he is the steam, he is the destructiveness at the heart of the furnace that we burn ourselves up in, and that’s how we win. that’s how we defeat the can. by being so damn dumb and sweet. i love us. we don’t stand a chance, and yet we win. isn’t that basically how the story always goes? he’s in college to expand his horizons. okay let’s talk about something else. it’s getting stinky and noisy in here despite my devotions, and i have to piss. isn’t that how the yeah whatever. it’s dizzying, really. this phenomenon of self-centered perception. i look out the window and the streets and wintry clumps of cars stretch out away from me. that’s incredible. the potentialities it opens up are nearly maddening.